When not obsessing on the socially redeeming power of tar and feathers, it's times like these that make me especially grateful for the ethereal nature of some art. According to Vocabulary.com:
"Ethereal comes from the Greek word for ether, which is a drug that makes you feel lightheaded and, in larger doses, causes you to lose consciousness. An ethereal substance or sound is one that carries the feeling of ether -- something you might see in a vision, that might strike you as heavenly or supernatural. Something ethereal is airy and insubstantial, like a ghostly figure at the top of the stairs. This word can also describe something delicate and light, like a singer’s ethereal voice."Ethereal moments can be found in a dance sequence that feels as if the choreographer is peeling away layers of air (akin to delicate layers of onionskin) while lifting the veils of distance, disorientation, and disinterest from an audience's eyes and elevating their spirits by stimulating their senses. Although some ethereal moments in music (the prelude to Lohengrin, Mozart's Act I trio in Cosi Fan Tutte, the sequence in The Nutcracker when the Christmas tree magically grows to epic proportions) and theatre (the memory of a silent moment of fluttering emotional fragility in Maureen Stapleton's portrayal of Amanda Wingfield -- or the thrill of watching Winthrop Paroo overcome his shyness to tell everyone how excited he is about the arrival of the Wells Fargo wagon) may be well rehearsed, they can nevertheless stimulate feelings of awe and spontaneity in a receptive audience.
While many people find solace in YouTube videos about animals doing funny things or photo albums demonstrating the exquisite beauty to be found in nature, artists of every type create content which can bring buoyancy to a stressed-out soul. One of my favorites is Grant Snider, whose Incidental Comics arrive every week by email in his subscribers' mailboxes.
Several years ago, a brilliant aerial photographer (Yann Arthus-Bertrand) released a coffee table book entitled Earth From Above filled with jaw-dropping images which left viewers sputtering in search of words that could articulate their reactions to his work.
In her recent interviews with male dancers performing in Matthew Bourne's touring production of Swan Lake (entitled "Boys Will Be Swans: What Is That Show and How Do I Do It?"), Roslyn Sulcas revealed how an exposure to ballet at the right age can help a boy overcome any fears of whether or not dance could or should play a critical role in his future. As dramaturg Joy Meads notes:
“From the moment I first read Wakey, Wakey, I wanted to bring my father to see it. I always want to share Will Eno's writing with people I love. There is a strange alchemy in Will’s plays that draws us away from the anxious, racing, lonely world outside and into a quiet communion with one another and those solid, undeniable realities that connect us: the frailty of our bodies; the blind cruelty of chance; the unremarked wonders that brought us into this moment; the comfort of fleeting connection."
“His plays invite us to be present, to become aware of our emotional experience of the questions they raise, and to be alive to our neighbors’ experiences. A few years back, I was walking to meet friends after seeing one of Will’s plays and realized I was more aware of the crispness of the wind on my face, more curious about the thoughts of the people I passed. Almost imperceptibly, he makes us more conscious of the world and more connected to those around us. We feel the essential loneliness of the human condition, and yet we are held within an incongruous sense of community -- each of us alone, yet united. Wakey, Wakey is a simple, unpretentious play that somehow, as it accumulates, becomes profoundly moving and joyful.”In the following video clips, two great American playwrights noted for their strategic use of pregnant pauses and sobering silence (Edward Albee and Will Eno) discuss the craft of playwriting in ways that might surprise many theatregoers.
Albee's thoughts about musical punctuation are especially helpful to playwrights who measure pauses and moments of silence with a spoken version of musical beats. While their skill in pacing a character's speech may speak with greater strength to audiences with an ear for music, there are people in any audience who will respond to their style of writing like someone luxuriating in a deep tissue massage. Others may feel as if they've been caught in a spiderweb that is preventing them from reaching a carefully planned destination.
Although live performances are, by nature, ephemeral experiences, two plays currently receiving their Bay area premieres demonstrate the difference between an ethereal and an essential performance style. One play's ethereal nature lets it float above the stage like a hydrofoil traveling on a thin cushion of air. The other drama, which deals with essential questions sparked by emotional exigencies, engages its audience through an epistolary process.
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The American Conservatory Theater is currently presenting Will Eno's 2017 dramedy entitled Wakey, Wakey in a production starring Tony Hale as an Everyman type of character. Clad in flannel lounging pants, Hale spends most of his time piercing the fourth wall as he sits in a wheelchair addressing the audience about matters of seemingly minor, yet possibly major consequence. Because Guy is not quite sure where he is or how he got there, his words, thoughts, and ideas range from comfortably banal to spiritually profound. |
| Tony Hale stars as Guy in Wakey, Wakey (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Through the potent combination of Russell H. Champa's lighting and Leah Gelpe's film, projections, and sound design, the audience becomes more intrigued with the storytelling process and, like Guy, is lulled into a comfortable state of mind to the point where it's easier to accept and embrace the inevitability of death.
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| Tony Hale stars as Guy in Wakey, Wakey (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
With sets and costumes by Kimie Nishikawa and choreography by Joe Goode, Guy's passage from a state of limbo to reincarnation, eternal rest, or mere nothingness is comforted by the soothing presence of Lisa (Kathryn Smith-McGlynn), a woman who might be a hospice attendant or some kind of spirit guide. As director Anne Kauffman explains:
“Will’s style is no frills, no flashy things. He is highly theatrical in his lack of theatricality, which is part of what I love about the piece. Directing this play is about getting out of the way of Eno’s language, rather than prescribing what it means: you have to tread lightly on his words. If you put pressure on his words, then the meaning will be just one thing. If you follow the language and let it play itself, then you’ll find the sweet spot: putting just enough pressure that gives it its multiple meanings. What Will so beautifully demonstrates in this play is that life is very ad hoc; it’s catch-as-catch-can. There’s something comforting in the knowledge that real life is not as sculpted as traditional playwriting makes it out to be. Instead of one moment leading to another, Will’s plays are like free association. Life is free association, and somehow its ultimate design is more beautiful. Somehow a fucked-up flower is more beautiful than an all-together flower.”
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| Tony Hale stars as Guy in Wakey, Wakey (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
“A producer friend of mine used to say ‘You know, the problem with you New York theater artists is that you have no money, so all of the fireworks (all of the theatrics) are in the words.’ He meant that as an insult, but I took it as a compliment. That’s what's so incredible: the language, rather than the design, articulates the world. You can have no scenery at all, and when you’re with these characters, you can still imagine a world. The language is so provocative and so specific that it constructs the world around itself. Even though there’s edge to Will’s work, there is also curiosity and he’s truly interested in beauty. He’s interested in revealing the world as irony rather than devastation. He finds joy in the shadows (and not in a rubberneck-y way). There’s some fun to be had with the darkness. There’s something optimistic about the darkness.”
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| Kathryn Smith-McGlynn and Tony Hale in a scene from Wakey, Wakey (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
Through a curious set of circumstances, Eno added a prologue to Wakey, Wakey for American Conservatory Theater's production, which increases the running time from 60 to 90 minutes. Initially, this was done as a project for some of the students in ACT's Master of Fine Arts program, but when placed before the original play, the prologue points to a tantalizing possibility.
The action takes place in a classroom where a substitute teacher, Ms. Forester (Kathryn Smith-McGlynn), arrives to teach four students (Dinah Berkeley, Emma Van Lare, Jeff Wittekiend, and LeRoy S. Graham III) a lesson on Sacred Places, Architecture, and Time. After being informed that this is a class for driver's education, she tries to involve the students in a discussion about the concept of a "quiet event."
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| Kathryn Smith-McGlynn as Ms. Forester in a scene from Wakey, Wakey (Photo by: Kevin Berne) |
The idea that such wildly different lesson plans could get mixed up is an interesting dramatic trick which (with the help of a hefty dose of magical realism) might provide the key to understanding Eno's play. Consider the following:
- Important figures in Ancient Egypt were buried in elaborate tombs that often contained food, clothes, and boats that could aid their passage to the afterlife.
- In Greek mythology, souls had to cross the river Styx in order to traverse the border between Earth and the Underworld.
- In Stanley Kubrick's groundbreaking 1968 science fiction film entitled 2001: A Space Odyssey, an astronaut undergoes a mind-boggling experience described as follows by Wikipedia:
"Bowman leaves Discovery One in an EVA pod to investigate another monolith orbiting the planet. The pod is pulled into a vortex of colored light, and Bowman is carried across vast distances of space while viewing bizarre cosmological phenomena and strange landscapes of unusual colors. Bowman finds himself in a large neoclassical bedroom. He sees, and then becomes, older versions of himself: first standing in the bedroom, middle-aged and still in his spacesuit, then dressed in leisure attire and eating dinner, and finally as an old man lying on a bed. A monolith appears at the foot of the bed, and as Bowman reaches for it, he is transformed into a fetus enclosed in a transparent orb of light, which floats in space beside the Earth, gazing at it."
- Steven Spielberg's 1977 sci-fi hit, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, relied on music and math to provide a common language base between interplanetary civilizations.
- In 1997's Contact, Jodie Foster portrayed a SETI scientist who experienced a stunning example of time and space travel as depicted in the following clip:
Is Ms. Forester's classroom a spiritual rest stop for people who die in automobile accidents? Is Guy's death important? Or is he just a random soul who's been given a lengthy soliloquy? The answers to these questions are wide open to interpretation.
In many ways, Eno's play resembles a motivational seminar given by a [dead] life coach who, though not overtly histrionic, garnishes this gentle cerebral-spiritual experience with plenty of laughs. At the end of the evening, ACT's production triggers bubble machines, a light show, and a balloon drop to send the audience home with smiles on their faces in a refreshing reminder that, as Mary Poppins might say, "Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."
Performances of Wakey, Wakey continue through February 16 at the Geary Theatre (click here for tickets).
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On October 17, 1929, a new show opened on Broadway featuring music by Vincent Youmans with lyrics by Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu. Although Great Day only lasted for 36 performances (on October 24, the stock market's "Black Thursday" triggered the Wall Street Crash of 1929), the opening lyric of the show's title song lives on:"When you're down and outFor many people, a sure way to snap out of the blues is by reading advice columns which, though they may deliver vicarious thrills, offer a sobering reminder that other people's problems can be much more painful than one's own. Whether some turned to Eppie Lederer ("Ask Ann Landers"), Judith Martin ("Miss Manners"), or Amy Dickinson ("Ask Amy"), my favorite has always been Dan Savage ("Savage Love").
Lift up your head and shout
There's gonna be a great day!"
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| Kina Kantor in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
“As a child, on mornings before my parents awoke, I secretly read Dear Abby, hoping to catch glimpses of the adult world that might inform my struggles with my parents. They were distant figures, and I craved insights into the workings of their alien minds. Though I might not always have understood the adult concerns of the writers, I admired their vulnerability. They needed help and were brave enough to say so. Abby always seemed so open to whatever they brought," recalls Bill English, the artistic director of San Francisco Playhouse. "These days, our world of infinite connectedness can be cold, each of us lit by the cool glow of our laptops and phones. Alone in our rooms, we reach out (often to someone we have never met). To me, it is a wondrous miracle that the yearning of the human spirit for comfort and connection can bounce from keyboard to satellite to synapse and find open hearts that hear. Dare to be vulnerable and we are not so lonely as we imagine. But the process fails without equal openness on both ends.”
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| Susi Damilano and Mark Anderson Phillips in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
A stage adaptation of Cheryl Strayed's 2012 book entitled Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice On Love and Life from Dear Sugar (co-conceived by Nia Vardalos, Marshall Heyman, and Thomas Kail) is currently receiving its Bay area premiere from San Francisco Playhouse in a stylish production designed by Jacquelyn Scott that has been beautifully lit by Michael Oesch and subtly enhanced by sound designer Theodore J.H. Hulsker. The writing (chosen from letters Strayed received as an advice columnist) is filled with far more passion -- and her responses fairly burst with compassion -- than audiences will find in Eno's laidback Wakey, Wakey. As a result, the emotional impact of Tiny Beautiful Things is much stronger, triggering reactions that range from bursts of laughter to collective gasps as the play unveils truths about human nature that are comical, poignant, and can even provoke a visceral response.
San Francisco Playhouse's co-founder and producing director, Susi Damilano, stars as Sugar, the pseudonym she inherits from the former columnist (Steve Almond) who ran dry and offered her the position (for no pay). At first, Sugar is bemused by the questions being asked by those seeking advice. But as their confessions become more painful (some are downright gruesome), crafting answers for their aching souls takes on a new weight as she reaches into her imperfect past for ways to frame a helpful response that can encourage total strangers to take action on their own behalf. As Bill English (who directed this production) explains:
"Vulnerability is one of the most inviting human traits, the willingness to be seen. It is an essential element of a successful theatre experience. The alchemy of empathy requires a circular flow of open-heartedness to flow from stage to audience to stage to audience. Actors, in opening their hearts and spirits and stripping themselves bare, invite us to enter their experience. If the actor is not vulnerable, we hit a wall at the proscenium and cannot enter."
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| Mark Anderson Phillips in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
"As an audience, it is our charge to open our hearts to the actor, to allow their experience to resonate and merge with our own. Our theatre is the one place we can drop our guard for a few hours. And we must. If we cross our physical and psychic arms in resistance, wrinkle the corner of our mouths in cynicism, or narrow our eyes in judgment, theatre just won’t work. As a long-time Cheryl Strayed fan, I was thrilled to see that Nia Vardalos’s wonderful dramatic adaptation of her Tiny Beautiful Things was available. I felt that Ms. Strayed’s courage and capacity to be completely vulnerable about the process of living could be an ideal invitation to our Empathy Gym."
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| Jomar Tagatac and Susi Damilano in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
The play's largely epistolary format allows three actors (Kina Kantor, Mark Anderson Phillips, and Jomar Tagatac) to take on the personas of various people who have written to "Dear Sugar" in search of guidance. Whether they seek help in ending a relationship, escaping painful memories of being sexually abused by a grandparent, or are struggling to cope with the tragic loss of a child, each letter rings true and receives a tantalizing (and occasionally tart) response.
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| Kina Kanto, Susi Damilano, Jomar Tagatac, and Mark Anderson Phillips in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Jomar Tagatac and Kina Kanto do a fine job of conveying the anguish and confusion of the letter writers they portray. While the role of Sugar seems tailor-made to Damilano's talents, Mark Anderson Phillips dominates the stage with a versatility of range and a chameleon-like display of what this popular Bay area actor has in his professional toolbox.
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| Mark Anderson Phillips and Susi Damilano in a scene from Tiny Beautiful Things (Photo by: Jessica Palopoli) |
Performances of Tiny Beautiful Things continue through March 7 at the San Francisco Playhouse (click here for tickets). Here's the trailer:
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